Halo: Spartan Assault Reviews
Spartan Assault features flashes of frantic Halo brilliance, but skip the touch controls. Play with mouse + keyboard!
These issues aside, Vanguard's created a decent blaster which offers a couple of moments of genuine bullet-dodging glory: Halo's touch-screen debut is good-looking, colourful, and fun. It's all rather bittersweet, really. If Spartan Assault was terrible, nobody would ever have to know about it, since the combination of release platforms makes it a bit of a curio from the off. In the end, it's actually pretty entertaining stuff. Here's hoping it eventually gets ported around a little.
Still essentially the same game as released on mobile, but at twice the price and with microtransactions that are even more cynically-designed than usual.
Spartan Assault ports many of Halo's best elements to the twin-stick shooter genre surprisingly well
Spartan Assault's simple gameplay and broken economy misses what's special about Halo
Halo: Spartan Assault transfers adequately from mobile platforms to the Xbox One, with microtransactions in tow.
It's by no means Windows 8's killer app, but provided you have access to a Windows 8 device, you could do much worse than Spartan Assault.
This game does nothing for the reputation of a series that was already shaken after the departure of Bungie – it would serve Microsoft well to re-focus the Halo franchise purely on what it does best.
Spartan Assault is simple but entertaining.
Microsoft's Windows 8-exclusive top-down shooter looks and sounds like a Halo game, but lacks the drama and spectacle of its Xbox cousins
I thought that Spartan Assault would be a great addition to the Halo universe while expanding the audience with a new genre. In the end the short campaign, lack of storyline, and ease of gameplay make this a tough sell. I enjoy dual stick shooters like this, so I did enjoy my time with the game. However, you might have to lower your expectations with your purchase.
This Xbox One port of the top-down Windows Phone shooter has fizzy gunplay but mediocre missions and questionable monetisation
If you own a Windows tablet or Windows phone, just play this on those devices instead if you must. Even if you are a huge Halo fan, there is absolutely no reason to shell out $15 for this game when you can play the exact same game for $7 on mobile devices. It's a shame because I feel like Halo: Spartan Assault could have been a great game if they took the time to add more features to the game. Make the game more challenging, add tons of new levels, make the game feel like a real twin stick shooter where I am shooting all over the screen to avoid being killed. That, to me, would have been worth the price increase, but as it stands, Halo: Spartan Assault on Xbox One is just an expensive port of a game that was released months ago.
At the end of the day Spartan Assault is not a bad game, but there are a few hiccups that hamper what could have been.
Ultimately, however, it feels like a mobile game, containing breezy missions that aren't much to look at and provide little in the way of a challenge. Oh, and it costs twice the price to access.
Just remember before going in where this game originated, and set expectations accordingly.
Spartan Assault is a title that only halo fans won't want to miss. Vanguard Games offers us a rather classic twin stick shooter, for a direct and no-frills arcade experience.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The choice to propose the exact same title on smartphones, tablets and PCs is welcome for those who own Microsoft's mobile devices but makes it difficult to judge in an absolute way a title such as Halo Spartan Assault. If on mobile it is quite complicated to find such a well-groomed twin stick shooter, with a hint of texture all in all adequate and the game mechanics gnawed but well adapted to the controls via touch screen; on PC the market has already offered much better in the past, such as titles like Renegade Ops that have been able to age such a classic genre, pushing the accelerator on the graphic impact and spectacularity.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Vanguard Games gives Halo fans something to cheer about in 'Halo: Spartan Assault,' distilling the essence of the first-person series into fun top-down shooter play.